FFS Champ leave it alone...talk about nitpicking. Nice blog(s) Tynan, the vast majority of readers no doubt understood the message you were trying to get across was about making customers love your business and not the fine art of the Japanese tea ceremony :)

@Champ: As I've said before... these things aren't making the difference between "bad" and "good", they're the difference between "good" and "excellent". When someone carefully puts the tea bag in, instead of tossing it, it's a signal.

A few days after that experience we went to an amazing tea shop in Montreal. The woman showed us the ideal way to make our tea, handled the whole tea set almost reverently, and very obviously cared about the tea. As a result I'm raving about the place to anyone who will listen.

As for the Sony girl, are you seriously telling me you've never had a salesperson who annoyed you because they cared more about their commission than how good the product was for you?

Tynan

I'm just not that type of person. I don't go hunting around for the ultimate hip vegan restaurant with the best chips. Food is something to do in the background while I talk to someone. I don't demand an experience when I go out to eat. I don't even really demand good service. I'd like my drink refilled now and again, but if not, no big deal. Hell, my last experience with the Sony store involved me paying an extra $25, and then having to drive an hour just to get my money back, and I was pretty chill about that too, it sounded like an honest mistake.

Regarding business/pointing out opportunities/sharing what you have learned: As I said, the post has a good point. I think you'd be hard pressed to find someone who disagrees with that. And I'm assuming you have a business/are planning a business of your own here, but I would much rather see this post as "here is why my business excels/will excel" with maybe a paragraph's worth of negative examples like these. You say it's not a complaining post but I hardly see much else.

And about judging someone by their blog... I think you can learn a lot about a person by what they choose to write about, and how they write it. Maybe it's not as effective as actually meeting you, But I think your blog contains a pretty deep, all around depiction of you. And whether this gives you something to judge or not, I don't think I'll ever be the type of person who blogs about his not-quite-excellent experience at the tea shop.

Thanks for reading. This is what happens when I can't sleep and there's some good old internet debating to be done.

Tynan-
I think we have very different outlooks, and that is going to leave this argument partially unsettled.

You were right in assuming I'm a little out of my element here- I don't think I have ever even been to a vegan restaurant, and I'm not particularly inclined to change that. I don't even know what they offer (I guess avocado volcanoes). But in retrospect, any restaurant I've gotten chips at (entirely Mexican restaurants) I'm fairly sure has had home made or at least deceptively warmed chips. I'm not sure how I'd react to getting Tostitos as an appetizer.

As for tea, the last time I had hot tea was a very late night at Denny's, and they have a wide range of Lipton and more Lipton. The last green tea I got cold in a 20 oz. bottle, and I swore I pressed the "Pepsi" button on that vending machine. However, the complaint about how the teabag was placed is completely out there. I can't imagine caring or even noticing something like that. Did that really negatively impact your "experience"? Its things like this that give me such a problem with this post. I'm baffled by that one.

It's the Sony store that really bothers me. You had an admittedly friendly, helpful and knowledgeable salesperson. Your complaint is that... she wanted to sell you something. She's a salesperson. But the incredible thing is next. You were inexplicably passed to an unfriendly salesman right in the middle. Tynan! That's something to complain about! That's a legitimately unsatisfactory experience! But you pass it off as a postscript while you devote a paragraph pointing out the flaws of the kind of salesperson I would LOVE to experience regularly? Huh.

First of all, sorry about the length, I decided to really put everything out there for discussion. I chopped it up to make it more digestible, but it's still a ton to read.

Karol: Both yours and Tynan's comments are conflicting a little with the post itself. If you are right about green tea, and burning it has an effect on the flavor similar to, say, overcooking a steak, then I completely agree. Tynan, if your tea was bad, then I'm with you. However, that is not what I read in the post.

I am hardly an expert on the finer details of green tea. So everything I know about it I am drawing from the post. Tynan said nothing about flavor. All he said was "boiling water instead of the 80 degrees celcius it's meant to be" From this I assumed that it didn't affect the flavor, but instead the temperature was kind of a tea etiquette that this place didn't quite follow. In fact, Tynan even said later that "the tea was excellent" If it was not just good, but excellent anyway, the temperature hardly matters at all.

So Tynan, Karol; was it a careless use of words in the post, or are you exaggerating to make your rebuttal hold more weight?

Champ and G:

I think you're missing it.

There's a rule in business that says "under promise, over deliver." The other way around is simply no good.

So expecting what is promised is not being anal.

High end green tea should never be served with boiling water. It burns the tea and it doesn't taste good. You ever hear people say "I hate green tea?" It's because they use boiling water and scorch it.

I've never been to a tea shop that used boiling water for green (or white, for that matter) tea, but I'd complain about it too if they did.

Same with the Bonny's restaurant experience. If you're going to a vegetarian/vegan place that claims to be healthy, all-natural, etc...they better deliver.

Karol

Reminds me of the story of the bartender who was asked why he always got bigger tips, when his drinks were the same size as anyone elses. "Maybe because I fill three quarters, and then say 'lets put some more in', and fill it up?"

Forgot to respond to a couple other things:

I'll do the grey blob thing, but it's not at the top of my list right now. Thanks for the feedback!

For Dvorak I don't rearrange my keys. I just change the mappings and touch type.

Tynan

I'm not complaining, I'm pointing out opportunities for companies to go from good to excellent, a distinction that matters.

@Champ: Home made chips don't matter in most places, but to people who eat healthy in healthy restaurants, it DOES matter. Not a life or death issue, but it's something we notice. High end tea shops should care about water temperature, because water temperature has a very noticeable difference on flavor.

Again, not a huge deal, but small details that would have made me LOVE these places.

I'm reading a lot about business these days, so these sorts of things stand out to me. I'm trying to share what I've learned through examples.

@G: I don't have everything figured out by any means, but I have a pretty good handle on what is important. I spend my time doing what I love, with family and friends, traveling and learning, and being as healthy as possible.

I'm not sure what Barry has to complain about with my song for Mystery, and don't really care either. I like/liked Barry, but from what I understand he spends his time spewing negativity towards people who used to be his friends. Maybe he needs to figure out what's important in life?

I don't exaggerate anything, and can't think of any claims I've made regarding pickup. I definitely didn't sleep with as many girls at Proho as many of the other guys, but I wasn't trying to. That's not to say that I didn't have a huge amount of failures (I did), but rather that quantity was never my goal.

As for being rigid, I think that's something that you can't really judge from a blog. Many girls I've dated have told me I'm too stubborn, though, so maybe you're on to something.

Tynan

I agree with Champ.
It sounds like you haven't actually lived a real life tynan. And I don't mean because you haven't done enough "crazy shit". I mean because it really sounds like you still haven't figured out what's important in life and what isn't.
True, you're young, so there's time to fix it, but frankly, you ain't no spring-chicken buddy, so you better hurry, cause problems like the ones you have take decades to fix!

You are SO rigid in so many things...it's freaky. Real travellers become more easygoing as they experience more of the strange world we live in. You seem to become even more anal.

Now as for that honesty of yours...how about telling the truth about your whole PUA "successes". Barry Kirkey seems to think you may have over-exagerated some of those, especially in your song/ode to Mystery :)
So go the extra mile and give us some more of those essential details you seem to have skipped over... :)

See how easy it is to nit-pick?

You're welcome.